Animals also began to spread across South and North America

From South America, mammals like ground sloths and glyptodonts were widly distributed in North America. Moreover, many South American tropical mammals, like monkeys and bats, colonized the forests of Central America, and are very abundant today. South American predator marsupials went extinct 3 million years ago,at which point North American predators, such as cats, bears and foxes, migrated south and occupied the ecological space left behind.